Charles (John Huffam) Dickens Biography

Dictionary of Literary Biography on Charles (John Huffam) Dickens

Charles Dickens had one thing in common with his creation Thomas Gradgrind, the heartless utilitarian in Hard Times: a love of facts. Along with fourteen novels, many of them rich in topical allusion, Dickens produced a body of work as reporter, essayist, correspondent, and editor that constitutes a lifelong account of the facts of Victorian life as he knew them. However, this nonfiction is anything but a mere collection of Gradgrindian data. In his reporting and commentary, Dickens is often an outraged reformer, uncompromising in his attacks on privileged interests. In the early sketches, he is a writer trying to achieve a synthesis of art and social criticism. The surviving letters, some 14,500 of which the editors of the ongoing Pilgrim Edition have collected, reveal a man of astonishing energies, who attempted to impose an artist's vision of order on every aspect of his life and work. In the late essays, Dickens emerges as a restless, poetic wanderer who masterfully blends observation, autobiography, and allegory.

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